


The Importance of Towels

by spacegandalf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Towels, utter madness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-17
Updated: 2011-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/spacegandalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark had been able to see the dingy pub for years.  And when he went in and discovered the world of magic...well, his parents had been telling him about hitchhiking aliens for ages, so it wasn't too hard to believe.  He only wished he'd thought to bring a towel with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Importance of Towels

**Author's Note:**

> There have been liberties taken with all canons involved. Small ones, I hope (I can't remember for the life of me where the LC is in London, for example). This is crack born out of the prompt 'Someone arrives in Diagon Alley...with a mission'. JK Rowling, Douglas Adams and the Beeb...I'm sorry.

Mark had been able to see the dingy pub for years.  He hadn't quite ever understood why his parents couldn't.  He had pointed it out to them once, as they were walked along the high street, but they had just shaken their heads and pulled him along.  When, at last, he'd gotten old enough to venture around London on his own, that was one of the first things he did: visit the pub.  He wasn't planning on drinking anything; he just wanted a look around. 

No one ever seemed to go in the pub, no one seemed to notice it was there.  It wasn't even a cursory glance as they walked past -- their eyes slid right past it.  He wasn't sure why it happened.  As soon as he got inside he had a fair idea.  It wasn't a normal pub -- it was it...it was full of witches and wizards.  It was full of witches and wizards and if he wasn't mistaken, that was a vampire in the corner.  He wondered whether he should just get out before anything happened, but he was too curious, too far in, now.  He'd gotten inside.  Why couldn't he go a little further? 

He felt out of place in his jeans and t-shirt.  Everyone else seemed to be wearing long, flowing robes, like you saw in pictures -- pictures of people who didn't exist, people who shouldn't exist.  Witches and wizards didn't exist!  Magic wasn't real.  It just didn't happen.  But then someone spilt a drink all down his front, and it was real, and it was happening, and they apologised profusely but he didn't say anything because they had just spilt a drink down his front and there was a wand sticking out of their pocket.  That was it could be, really, a stick of wood sticking out of a robe pocket of someone who quite clearly should have been wearing a pointy hat and have a wart at the end of their nose or something. 

He--he needed to digest it all. He did think of ordering something from the bar, but as he got closer he saw they were handling money he didn't recognise -- huge discs of gold -- well, maybe it wasn't gold. Was that solid gold? No, no, they wouldn't make their currency out of gold. But it was money he didn't have, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself. If he wasn't supposed to be here, then, well, he'd be in trouble, wouldn't he?

The barman noticed him looking around and when he was free he called out to him: "Hey, you.  Are you looking for Diagon Alley?" 

Mark didn't know what Diagon Alley was, but if it looked like he was looking for Diagon Alley, then, well, by George he was.  So he nodded and smiled gratefully when the barkeeper brought him to the outside courtyard. 

"You got your wand, boy?"  Mark shook his head.  "You look a bit old to be eleven, are you-- well, kids these days.  Look, you just go through that-- do you have your parents with you?" Mark shook his head again.  "Do you need help?  You quite sure you'll be alright?"  Mark nodded again, smiled, and by the time he looked back at the wall, there was a hole there -- an archway where there hadn't been an archway before.  Through it there was a street that definitely didn't exist.  It was paved with cobblestones and there were shops that sold owls and cauldrons and...eye of newt?  Oh, God, it was all true!  It was all true.  Mark wasn't sure what to think of it.

Mark, it must be said, had more practice in believing odd things than most.  His father had travelled the galaxy and returned with an extreme fondness for towels and a good mate from a planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.  But that was aliens and spaceships and, in its own sort of way, seemed pretty logical.  (Some of his father's stories, however, did not.  Mark often thought that his father was just pulling his leg when he mentioned a statue of himself on a planet people by birds.)  Magic and witches and wizards were _not_ logical.

Yet, because he was very clearly on a street filled with them, he accepted their presence and wished for a towel.  He wasn't sure what a towel would do for him, but his father swore by them and never left the house without one.  Mark wasn't expecting to have need for a towel, so he hadn't brought one along...clearly, the next course of action was to work out whether witches and wizards had towels, and whether there was a shop that sold them.

He was searching for quite a long time.  However, to the wizarding world's credit, he found one.  It was tucked away in a bit that didn't get visited much, and it was very small, judging from the outside.

Apparently, judging from the outside was exactly what one shouldn't do when one judged a towel shop, because it seemed to be much bigger on the inside.  Mark thought this odd, but he didn't seem capable of protesting oddities any more, as he'd been quite overwhelmed by this point.

The man behind the counter of the towel shop was tall, lean and had dark, curly hair.  He also looked bored to death, which was understandable as Mark was the only one in the shop.  "Hello?" he called, walked between racks and racks of towels.  Some proclaimed they flew -- and there was a specimen that hovered a foot off the ground, so Mark didn't doubt that.  Some proclaimed that their stripes not only provided sustenance and anti-depressants, but were different flavoured according to what colour they were.  (A man Mark didn't know by the name of Rooster had come into this shop and bought one, but Mark was oblivious to this.)

"You're not a wizard," was the reply Mark got from the man behind the counter, and he started.  Was it that obvious?  "How are you here if you aren't a wizard?  No, hang on, you...you must be able to see the Leaky Cauldron.  Interesting."

Mark had no idea how the man knew all this, but he nodded anyway.  Approaching the counter, he said, "Could I buy a towel?  I don't have any of that money I saw in the Leaky -- the big gold things -- but I have fifteen quid."

"What towel do you want?"

"I-- uhm, a good towel.  I'm really not sure why I'm buying one, to be honest.  It just seems like a good thing to have.  My dad swears by them, see, always has one, but I'm not sure why.  Something about hitchhiking."

The man raised an eyebrow, but before he could comment, another man came out from the back of the shop.  (There was a back of the shop?  How big _was_ this place?)  He was much shorter and stockier, and grinned when he saw Mark.

"Hello," he said, more welcoming than the man behind the counter.  "Need help?"  Mark wasn't sure why he assumed the other man wouldn't have given Mark help, but Mark nodded anyway.

"What are you planning on using the towel for?  Hitchhiking or a specialty purpose?  The specialty towels are over here," he said as he gestured to his left. 

"Um-- just hitchhiking, I think," said Mark.  "I figure it's a good thing to have, and I left mine at home -- do these really taste of different things, these stripes?"  His curiosity got the better of him and he just had to ask.

The shorter man said they did, so Mark had to believe him.  It wasn't like he could go around licking towels.  So the question was this: should he buy one of those, or one of the ones that flew?

"Are there stripy towels that fly?"

The shorter man -- his nametag said 'John', Mark saw -- chuckled and shook his head.  "Sorry, no.  That's what I said to Sherlock when I first saw them, too.  Are you a-- a Muggleborn, then?" he asked.

"Look at his clothes, John!  And he's clearly ill at ease -- he's not even a Muggleborn, not really.  Didn't get his Hogwarts letter."

"Sherlock!" John hissed, and Mark got the idea that he had just been insulted somehow.

"How do you know that?" Mark asked.

"It's obvious," said the man, unhelpfully.

"Don't take any notice of him," said John.  "He does that to everyone."  Directing his next words to the man -- Sherlock -- he said in a low voice, "So he's not going to be any help?  You said our culprit was a hitchhiker, that it was obvious from his shoes."

"No, John, even you should know that.  Now, are you going to buy a towel or not?" Sherlock asked Mark.

"Um-- how much are the flying ones?"

"In Muggle money, they're £12.50."

Mark chose a blue one and handed over the money.  He felt a little bit more secure now.  There was something comforting about having a towel with you.

"Do you happen to know a hitchhiker with ginger hair, average height, quite slim?"   Sherlock asked him.

It so happened that he did.  "I do, yes.  Why?"

"What's his name?  He's wanted on theft, breaking and entering, and assault."

Should Mark give his name?  He couldn't imagine that he'd committed the crime, but--well, if he was innocent then there would be no harm, would there?

"Ford Prefect," he said.  "But he doesn't seem like the type -- well, actually..." He'd heard a _lot_ of stories.

"Thank you," John said to Mark, because it became apparently that Sherlock wasn't going to.

The next day, when Ford was arrested, Mark didn't say anything.  He just thought of the towel sitting in the bottom of his bag, wondering whether he should show his Dad that it flew.  Somehow, he didn't think that he should be told about the magical world -- from the stories, he'd been shaken up quite enough by the whole alien thing, and that was logical.  No, this would be Mark's little secret.


End file.
